https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-02-13/why-ameri...

In America, houses in Maine can be built completely differently from houses in Florida.

The reason we don't build out of stone/brick, besides cost of construction, is that they're terrible insulators. So your heating or AC bill is going to go absolutely through the roof.

A wood frame stuffed with insulation means your home can be energy-efficient. This is a good thing.

We don't fetishize a house being "solid" and we don't generally punch our walls on a regular basis. :) "Solid" sounds like a big waste of money to me.

Not really, no. You can build a much bigger house and/or save money for upgrades to things that are expected to increase the later sale value of the house (chiefly, the kitchen, but also things like nice outdoor spaces) instead of building with brick. In some areas brick houses are more common but they are mostly older ones. It’s difficult to recover the extra cost of building with brick when selling a house, so it’s rarely done. Since most houses are build by housing developers contracted to one or more newly-building neighborhoods, they’re very sensitive to anything that would reduce their margins or see finished houses sit on their books, and all-brick construction would usually do that.

Brick is sometimes used in pasted-on façades, usually as a kind of “skirt” on the lower part of the front of the house. These may not even be full bricks, but ones cut lengthwise to maximize use of material and reduce weight (see: “pasted-on”)

[EDIT] I should add that the overriding concern of almost all home construction and renovation in the US is reducing the amount of labor required. That’s where most of the cost is, so it’s ruthlessly optimized.

> Even poor people don't build houses from plywood. But in America it seems that everyone, poor and rich builds extremely fragile houses.

It isn't generally just plywood, that would be a very unusual house.

As for your question of cost, with brick exterior walls, the marginal cost of interior volume decreases with size, so the question of an "awesome house" kinda changes. What people expect to be paid for labour is also higher.

Brick is not a panacea, when it comes to building houses. It is an efficient thermal conductor, so insulation is more difficult, the way you have to fasten the interior of the house to it causes thermal bridging. Common ways of constructing brick buildings can cause condensation on the inside in cold winters, which can cause damage and harm air quality.

There are two and three hundred year old timber homes. It is quite doable if you have large enough overhangs, and a durable roof.

Also keep in mind Russia and Kazakhstan have a completely different climate to most of North America.

Then on top of all of this, a lot of North Americans think of houses very differently. There are people who are building for a lifetime and a legacy, but most are content to have a comfortable sizeable dwelling which isn't going to collapse. It's fine to build a mediocre timber home, if it means that people get more or less what they wanted. As somebody who appreciates fine quality housing, I'd like it another way, but it seems that my fellow North Americans have something else in mind, and that's their business.

Further, the American model might be more susceptible to damage, but the damage is more cheaply repaired. It also lends itself to remodel as trends change (e.g., central heating and airconditioning, innovations in indoor plumbing [like removing lead-based plumbing], computer networking, as well as changes in interior layout trends), which allows a property to hold more value for longer.

I miss living in houses made of wood. And how easily central air systems are installed in wooden homes.

Anyway, ONE reason is that the drywall home is more pliable - you can adjust the layout and change out the wiring / piping with relative ease. Of course, at that point you don't have much house left, other than a few supporting structures.

The American home is really the cement basement/foundation (outside of Florida), a carrier beam or two across the basement (metal) and a few wood carrier beams on the upper floor / floors. Insulation is typically fiberglass. After that, there is not much substance to it. The brick on the outside does not bear weight.

They do last a decent amount of time when maintained though. Then again, maintenance is high.

Not everyone. In the more rural areas there are a lot of farm houses build very solidly.

These are usually build according to traditional techniques stemming from the European guilds of carpenters and masons.

2) The invention of air conditioning (and low prices for heating) allow inefficient architectures while maintaining reasonable comfort.

3) Corporatization of construction led to structures that are efficient and quick to erect.

4) Insurability of a tract house with standard architecture is much better, due to predictable materials + labor costs.

Or the house is already built, and tearing it down to make a brick one is $$$ plus permit maybe will be denied.

And most homebuilding companies only use wood.

Not everyone. In "flyover country" there are a lot of solid craftsmen doing solid work.

Definitely one of the more 'wtf' moments when I moved.

Additionally, Americans are fairly fond of tearing down existing structures to rebuild which is harder to do with brick.

Thirdly, wood is an abundant resource in the US.